Could anyone please suggest a good micro SD card that is reasonably priced and is great for the steam deck? You go to Amazon and you find a gazillion brand with many different prices. Plus all the horror stories I’ve seen online with all the fake storage people buy from Amazon. So, if you guys have a suggestion I’d really appreciate some links/names. I’m open for best buy and micro center and even Walmart if I needed to. I’m looking for a 1TB card and I don’t care about the brand as long as it works well. Thank you all in advance.
I’ve had no issues with genuine SanDisk micro sdxcs despite purchasing from several different sources. SanDisk currently has a 1.5tb micro sdxc for $99 on amazon. Wherever you purchase from use f3probe to verify the card - https://fight-flash-fraud.readthedocs.io/en/latest/introduction.html.
Holy shit, thank you so much. It even has a Qt UI which fits very well with my desktop. Ill definitely use it when I get a card.
Honestly, I’ve always gone to a retail store if quality is a concern. Name brand SanDisks have literally never failed me. Just make sure you get at least U3/A2 class for speed.
This might help with understanding the labels on them: https://www.integralmemory.com/articles/memory-cards-understanding-the-labels/
So, the SD Association is absolutely fucking insane when it comes to giving labels to literally anything.
The Steam Deck supports UHS-1 microSD cards.
That’s the name of the bus. There’salso UHS-2 and UHS-3, but they’re backwards compatible with UHS-1, so that’s whatever.Speeds…
Some cards used speed “classes”, like Class 10…
There’s also U1 or U3 speeds (which is a speed rating independent of the bus. (A U3 cards is probably a UHS-1 card.
Some have a speed rated with a V, like V10, V30, etc.
They often have multiple labels too.
These can all be used to label the speed of a UHS-1 card:
UHS Speed Class- U1: 10 MB/s minimum write speed.
- U3: 30 MB/s minimum write speed.
Video Speed Class
- V6: 6 MB/s minimum write speed.
- V10: 10 MB/s minimum write speed.
- V30: 30 MB/s minimum write speed.
- V60: 60 MB/s minimum write speed.
- V90: 90 MB/s minimum write speed.
Class 10
- Class 10: 10 MB/s minimum write speed (legacy).
Anyway, U3 is basically the same as a V30.
U3/V30 would be the minimum I’d get for the Deck. Price being the deciding factor for the rest.
I don’t really care if the card ever fails, so brand was (mostly) irrelevant in my choice.That’s very annoying how complicated it is. Ok, U3 or V30. What about the A? Is it A1? A2? Or does that not matter.
Unrelated to the question, but I just wanted to note how surprising it was how fricking HOT sd cards get after you push a couple hundred GB of data onto them
for the cards…
sandisk extreme ($139 at bby) is a good choice. the switch-licensed card is the same price, and i think it’s the same card inside. the switch one also has a discount for bbyplus members (look on bby site for that).
the samsung pro plus costs a bit less and works well, too ($89 at bby).
for where to get them, safely…
buy in-store (or online for immediate pickup) from a major (b&m) retailer to avoid the potential problems with amazon’s co-mingled inventory.
Thank you
